What Do You Know About Football? Part 2: American Football

 The positions

Each team can have 53 players, but only 11 at a time are allowed on the field. The entire team actually consists of specialized subsets: the offensive, the defensive and the special teams. Unlike other football codes, there is high specialization and often each player does only one thing in one particular role with little improvisation or freedom to do tasks from other roles.

Offense
The offensive team’s responsibility is to score touchdowns, by either passing it to a player running towards the end zone or running the ball with a running back.

1. Quarterback– Also known as the "field general," because he's the on-the-field leader.  This player touches the ball on every play, and is responsible for distributing the ball to either wide receivers or running backs.
2. Offensive linemen - These players provide blocking for the quarterback and running backs.
3. Receivers – Receivers run down the field and catch a ball thrown from the quarterback. They are often the most popular and athletic players on the field.
4. Running backs – Running backs take the ball from the Quarterback and run forward looking to get to the end zone.  They may be called tailback, halfback or fullback (a position derived from rugby) depending on formation.

Defence
The defence team tries to either snatch the ball from the air or tackle the opposing teams’ defence:

1. Defensive linemen – The defensive linemen try to stop the quarterback from passing the ball and stop the running backs from running with the ball forwards.
2. Linebackers - When there are four linemen, there is a middle linebacker and two outside linebackers. When there are three linemen, there are two inside linebackers and two outside linebackers. Their job is to back up the linemen, as well as contain runners.
3. Cornerbacks –This player tries to prevent the receivers from catching the ball.
4. Safeties – Safeties as their name suggest are meant to stay back and prevent any balls from going deep towards their end zone.

Special Teams

Special teams are units that are on the field during kickoffs, free kicks, punts, field goal and extra point attempts.

1. Kicker - The placekicker kicks the ball through the goalposts to score points and kicks the ball to the other team to start the game and after each scoring possession. Although being on the field for only a few minutes, they dominate the top scorers table every season.
2. Punter – Executes punt kicks to the opposing team to limit any field position advantage.
3. Kick Returner - During a kickoff or punt, the returner tries to catch the ball and return it as far as he can towards the end zone. They can also be known as return specialists.

The organization of American football

There is no single national governing body for American football in the United States or a continental governing body for North America, other than the National Football League (NFL) in the USA. There actually is an international governing body, the International Federation of American Football (IFAF), but doesn’t have much influence on the game itself since the sport doesn’t get much recognition outside the USA. For all purposes, the sports administration is tied to the NFL, the only major American football league in existence. The current commissioner of the NFL is Roger Goodell.

In addition to the NFL there is the Arena Football League (AFL) and Canadian Football League (CFL) but both have slightly different rules. Every year there is a “draft” where teams get to recruit college and AFL players. The teams get to pick from a pool of candidates, with the last year’s championship winner getting the last pick and worse teams getting higher picks. It should also be noted that there is no promotion or relegation system, and teams share the revenues from the league, allowing more parity than in other codes.

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